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Saturday, 11 January 2014

It's raining cats and wasp nests?

We had a rather violent storm (or rather convergence of four storms) here on Monday afternoon that dumped a good amount of much needed rain. The bottom floor of the hospital where I work flooded, we nearly lost power to the building and a couple of people in the community were even struck by lightning.

Working late, it was night time when I was finally able to drive home but fortunately well and truly after the storm had passed. It wasn't until the next morning that I could survey the damage. Surprisingly there were only a couple of branches down around the place at home. We'd had a few storms the week before that must have cleaned off the dead ones from the gumtrees already.

There was; however, a strange grey hump shape sitting on the lawn. It wasn't moving so it was either dead or inanimate. Inching closer I could finally tell it was the nest that had been suspended from the underside of a gumtree branch. I had hoped it was wild bees but looking at this it's more like a huge wasp nest. The ants have been having fun exploring it since it made its landing.

It might seem a little bigger than it really is Jeni :D. Still had to check it wasn't inhabited first though - although the ants would have soon sorted that out. Since then I've noticed a couple more have appeared around the place on the grass and spotted a few more still up in the trees. I was kind of hoping they'd be some sort of native bee hives but I guess I'll have to settle for wasps.

About Me

We live on a semi-rural block in subtropical to temperate South-East QLD. After moving here nearly a year ago we have restarted our gardening and self-sufficiency journey from scratch. We keep chickens, grow fruit and vegetables as organically as possible and experiment with new recipes and ideas around the home in order to tread more lightly on the planet and delight in domestic discoveries. We hope you enjoy reading our quirky stories about our adventures and mishaps.